


an elaborately designed, privately owned spiral galaxy

by gggghost (dukeborninfebruary)



Category: DreamSMP, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Explicit Language, Gen, Sky Gods - Freeform, Villain Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot-centric, this completely misrepresents my thoughts on wilburs arc but i like it anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27098470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dukeborninfebruary/pseuds/gggghost
Summary: He made both friends and enemies, convicted Technoblade for conquering the world when no one else would.He got a taste of leadership for the first time, then. Something that he knows contributed to make him whatever the fuck he is today.They do say power corrupts, after all.Or:Wilbur builds a room with a button, and he reflects.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	an elaborately designed, privately owned spiral galaxy

Wilbur Soot used to be okay.

Maybe, really, his true decline started when he lived on a little island in the void, a peaceful place which was the first and last safe home he ever had. The sky dragged down around him endlessly, inevitable and eternal, but it was a sort of comfort to him. The Sky Gods demanded a sacrifice, and, well, in the grand scheme of things human beings are very small and inconsequential creatures.

He cried that night, in the dark that never really penetrated his bones until then.

Maybe it was in a tower by the shore, not far at all from bigger, better structures around him. Wilbur lived by himself, scammed his neighbors for pretty coins and committed petty thievery simply for the thrill of the fight. times were simpler back then.

And, oh, it had definitely come upon him by the time he set out for a new home, an island off the coast where he raised a log cabin and tamed a dog with a yellow collar. He built a railway, stretching across the sea in a labor of love he never stayed around long enough to enjoy in completion. He made both friends and enemies, convicted Technoblade for conquering the world when no one else would.

He got a taste of leadership for the first time, then. Something that he _knows_ contributed to make him whatever the fuck he is today.

They do say power corrupts, after all.

He made people into lab rats, ran experiment after experiment on the helpless players of just another server he found, overtook, and left an empty shell when he was done with his fun and games.

Wilbur joined the Dream SMP, passing as a normal, functioning person and planning to keep it that way. He hid his tired eyes from Tubbo and his nights spent thrashing in his sleep from Tommy. Fundy never asked about the way his hands shook as he wrote, Eret never commented on the way he kept his role as their president and ruler so closely guarded, and Niki never intruded when he was sure she could hear him crying.

He never learned to cry silently, and he turns it into just another thing to find wrong with himself.

L’Manburg fell, in a ways, with the maniacal laugh of a familiar face and ram’s horns which he once survived a flood and a fire with. Wilbur shook himself, scolded his stupidity in trusting yet another fucking backstabber.

Eret’s eyes, glowing white, are the main thing keeping him from sleep, these days.

Wilbur wonders — passively, because everything he does these days is through a red haze — if they should have noticed. Any one of them. Tommy, Tubbo, Niki, if they should have been able to see it. The way he always kept his power close to his chest, never let any one person become his equal.

(Oh, he knows he isn’t the strongest on the server. But he has his words and his lies and that has always been enough.)

He wonders if they should have, could have, if they noticed the crazed look in his bloodshot eyes as he stepped up to announce the votes. He wonders if they noticed the way he tugged at his hair during the war in frustration, pent up energy he never quite let out. He wonders if Tommy noticed his writing hands on the walk home from L’Man- _Manburg._

He asks, “Are we the bad guys?” And he feels himself slipping away. The sun sets and before he knows it he’s screaming at Tommy. voice contained only by the tight stone walls of the fucking shithole they try and compare to what he built up before.

The walls are gone now, he remembers in the back of his mind.

It feels sort of like he’s trapped in his own body, a spectator stuck watching himself as he plans and schemes, scribbles lines across countless sheets of paper and discards them with a sigh. Like the good old days, when his only worry was making a pretty penny from the rich of servers long gone. When he could ignore the dark of the storm, stay safe and sound with his guitar and his potions stands.

It’s been brewing for awhile now, he muses as Tommy tries to talk him out of it. The madness, the vengeance, the fucking cruelty he hears in his own voice when he bothers to snap back. He can’t find to care about them anymore. His own son tore down the walls he built up, one last step before Wilbur’s implosion and self destruction.

Tubbo- Tubbo isn’t on their side. He knows, he sees it in the way Tubbo nods along to everything he says, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” Never a question or a demand or a hint of doubt in his voice. Normally it would be nice, fuel to the fire burning in Wilbur’s heart. But he knows Tubbo well, and he knows he always has an ulterior motive. The kid wouldn’t hesitate to get on his good side and stab him in the back.

He thinks that Tubbo could do that to Schlatt, too. Maybe that was his reasoning, beforehand, to trust him. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Without Tommy — and Tommy, without a doubt, is no longer on his side — Tubbo is a loose canon. He never shows his true colors, and that makes him dangerous.

Before the festival, Tommy hands Wilbur a cake with something written in frosting on the top. Niki’s Cake, it says in bubbly cursive. Wilbur stares at it, long and hard, and he wonders of the ache he feels very suddenly in his throat has to do with the ash and smoke of the fireworks just launched by the partygoers somewhere below.

When the two leave the tower, the cake is smashed on the floor.

The plan goes to shit, because that’s just Wilbur’s luck. He trusts Techno, another jot in a great long list of mistakes and fuck-ups by Wilbur Soot. The entrance to the button room, a cruel mockery of a final control room buried deep in the past, cannot be found, and they are forced to wait for another day, another opportunity.

Wilbur used to be okay.

He thinks about those days as he digs the bunker, hidden in the side of a hill directly under the white house he built and found himself banished from. He thinks of Milo, and the Whale Facts, and Pee Dog, as he scrawls across the walls the lyrics of an almost forgotten song, an ode to a nation dead in Wilbur’s eyes.

The ravings of a madman, he supposes, and he laughs as he places TNT by hand through the tunnels he dug just hours ago. A labor of love and the consequence of hate.

Schlatt is in Manburg, he notices, and he races to the same small room he was screaming to himself in not long ago. The festival was a failure, but Wilbur Soot is not known for giving up. He’s intercepted by Tommy, and Quackity, who he knows will only be on their side as long as it takes for Schlatt to be dethroned.

(Of course, the president is not royalty, the president cannot be dethroned, but Wilbur supposes it is a sort of homage to the carefully construct position he meant entirely for himself, made to be more of an emperor than a president. He always thought it would be himself up there, victorious and free to be taken down by just another rebel in a long coat.)

The problem, in the end, is Tommy. Tommy cares so much, too fucking much. Tommy looks at Wilbur and doesn’t see the broken man, fucking hollow and irredeemable, that he’s become somewhere along the way. He sees a friend and a brother, and Wilbur finds he plan he so carefully constructed around his own villainy crumbling as Tommy unravels every inch of the stable human being he once was.

Tommy boxes Wilbur into a corner. Wilbur struggles and yells, he would rather fucking die with Manburg than let it all live. He isn’t particularly attached to his own life, anyways, and if Tommy goes down with him as well then that’s nothing he could have prevented.

Wilbur isn’t afraid to lose it all, if he really does have anything at all. He tells Tommy, “We have nothing left to lose. We can do whatever the fuck we want,” and he says it like a prayer. He’s going to go out, and when he does he will make sure it is with a boom.

But Tommy, with his big heart and kind words, screams over Wilbur every step of the way, fights like hell when any normal person would see the uselessness of struggling. He holds Wilbur still, pins him in the corner with the tip of his enchanted sword and patiently ignores Wilbur’s pitiful attempts to break free and slam a hand down on the button.

Wilbur stops trying, after awhile, and Tommy lets him go. He gives Wilbur a decision, to press the button (everything he as wanted for a long, long time) or break it (a setback on every plan he is concocting.)

Wilbur looks into the face of a kid, just a child caught up in this war and this bloodshed and this madness.

“Do you love it?” He asks. “Do you love L’Manburg?”

Tommy says, “Yes,” and his voice is sincere in ways Wilbur hasn’t heard in forever.

And Wilbur turns towards the button, breaks it with a single, swift chop of his axe.

A collective breath is released. Tommy looks tired, so fucking tired. It reminds Wilbur of himself, in a way. And he looks triumphant. “Let’s go,” he says, and Wilbur asks for just a moment alone.

He sings their anthem once again, the theme of a nation he has been fighting for for so long he doesn’t even care about anymore.

For the first time in a long, long time, Wilbur’s hands don’t shake as he places the button back on the wall.

**Author's Note:**

> another fic that i did in like 2 hours. oh god oh jesus please send help
> 
> title from "privately owned spiral galaxy" by crywank


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